for sojourners and exiles, dearly beloved (1 Pet. 2:11)

Confusion over the Gospel

So I’ve been thinking about how the gospel of grace strikes the mind of fallen man as so foreign that it often will sound absurd and foolish. Even as a Christian, to my own mind, it sometimes sounds absurd and crazy. It is utterly anti-intuitive to our natural selves. One might object and say “this emphasis on the foolishness of the gospel is itself foolishness.” And I would counter with the words of Paul: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1.18).

And yet in Romans 6 we see that God recognizes this weakness of ours and condescends to meet us in our need by inspiring the Apostle Paul to pen these words that are aimed at this very objection — thus to alleviate the potential confusion and vindicate the message from all derision. Calvin comments on this issue:

Throughout this chapter the Apostle proves, that they who imagine that gratuitous righteousness is given us by him, apart from newness of life, shamefully rend Christ asunder: nay, he goes further, and refers to this objection, — that there seems in this case to be an opportunity for the display of grace, if men continued fixed in sin. We indeed know that nothing is more natural than that the flesh should indulge itself under any excuse, and also that Satan should invent all kinds of slander, in order to discredit the doctrine of grace; which to him is by no means difficult. For since everything that is announced concerning Christ seems very paradoxical to human judgment, it ought not to be deemed a new thing, that the flesh, hearing of justification by faith, should so often strike, as it were, against so many stumbling-stones. Let us, however, go on in our course; nor let Christ be suppressed, because he is to many a stone of offense, and a rock of stumbling; for as he is for ruin to the ungodly, so he is to the godly for a resurrection. We ought, at the same time, ever to obviate unreasonable questions, lest the Christian faith should appear to contain anything absurd.
– Calvin’s Commentary on Romans

It seems to me that Paul offers us an example not only of boldly placarding and proclaiming Christ before the eyes and ears of fallen sinners, but also of anticipating and forestalling the certain objections that will arise. I think we see here a principle of cognition and condescension to both the confusion (of honest folk) and the derision (of dishonest and unbelieving folk) that will inevitably confront the announcement of this greatest news in the world.